


There's a fire down the street!

by HolyCatsAndRabbits



Series: Mr. Fell's Bookshop ficlets [11]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: BAMF Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Established Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Guardian demon Crowley, M/M, Mr. Fell's bookshop, POV Outsider, Snake Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:08:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22468408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolyCatsAndRabbits/pseuds/HolyCatsAndRabbits
Summary: It took longer this time, and when Mr. Crowley finally came out, he was carrying someone who didn’t seem to be awake. Or possibly alive. Oliver could see Mr. Crowley hesitate, looking at an ambulance which had pulled up to the kerb. But instead he carried the person over to Oliver, who was watching from behind the police barricade. Everyone else looked past Mr. Crowley, unaware of him standing there with yellow snake eyes bright and a fire victim in his arms. But Oliver could see clearly.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Mr. Fell's Bookshop ficlets [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1500449
Comments: 117
Kudos: 844





	There's a fire down the street!

**Author's Note:**

> Returning characters from earlier in the series:  
> Oliver and Caroline from ficlet #1! Four years have passed since “Are you an angel, too?”, making Oliver 10 and Caroline 13 now. They are brother & sister.  
> Rebekah, adult female, nurse at the hospital where Mr. Fell does his healings
> 
> This fic is now a podfic by the wonderful kholly! Follow the “other works inspired by this one” link to find it.

“There’s a fire down the street!”

Oliver, who was 10, had been watching the fire trucks race by Mr. Fell’s bookshop, wondering what the emergency was. But you could smell the smoke now, and someone had stopped in with the news. A block of apartments were burning. 

One of the other customers at the window said, “Oh, Mr. Fell, I didn’t realize you had a pet snake!”

Mr. Fell, who had a rather large black snake curled around his neck and shoulders, said absently, “Oh, I don’t.”

The snake’s yellow eyes were open and looking out the window with the rest of them. It tasted the air with its tongue, and then unwound itself and moved off along the floor into the bookshop. A moment later, Mr. Crowley stepped up to the window, adjusting his sunglasses.

“I’m going to go see!” Oliver announced, and before his 13-year-old sister Caroline could scold him, he took off down the sidewalk. After all, if they were old enough to visit the bookshop on their own, that meant Oliver was old enough to walk down the street, wasn’t he? And it was a good thing he had. A moment later, Oliver burst back into the bookshop and exclaimed, “There are people trapped in there!”

Predictably, this upset Mr. Fell, who immediately started moving toward the door. Mr. Crowley was suddenly in front of him, with a rather frightening look on his face, although Mr. Fell seemed unimpressed.

“This is as close as you get, angel, do you understand me?”

“The ambulances won't be this far down,” Mr. Fell protested.

Mr. Crowley literally growled at him. “They won't be necessary.”

Mr. Fell gave his husband an irritated look, but he nodded. Mr. Crowley turned to Caroline. “Stay with him. He might actually listen to you.”

Mr. Fell made a show of rolling his eyes, but he beckoned to Caroline, and they went back to what they had been doing, sorting through old poetry books. Oliver thought the poetry thing was kind of boring, except when Mr. Fell had found a book of limericks. Mr. Crowley walked back into the bookshop and disappeared behind the shelves.

Caroline caught Oliver’s eye. “You’d better go,” she said softly. “In case he needs help.”

Oliver nodded and took off down the street again. When he got to the fire scene, there was Mr. Crowley already, standing between a couple of fire trucks. Nobody seemed to notice him, but he glanced Oliver’s way, and then skirted a couple of firefighters and ran up into the burning apartment building.

He came out a moment later with two people, one of which he was half-carrying. Mr. Crowley’s sunglasses were missing and his black clothes were smouldering. He left the people on the sidewalk and went back into the building.

It took longer this time, and when Mr. Crowley finally came out, he was carrying someone who didn’t seem to be awake. Or possibly alive. Oliver could see Mr. Crowley hesitate, looking at an ambulance which had pulled up to the kerb. But instead he carried the person over to Oliver, who was watching from behind the police barricade. Everyone else looked past Mr. Crowley, unaware of him standing there with yellow snake eyes bright and a fire victim in his arms. But Oliver could see clearly.

“Go get Mr. Fell,” Mr. Crowley told him.

Oliver started backing away. “Your shirt’s on fire, by the way!” he called, pointing.

Mr. Crowley made an irritated face. He looked over his shoulder and the fire on his back went out with a puff of smoke.

Oliver returned with Mr. Fell and Caroline as quickly as they could. No one seemed to see them either. Mr. Fell checked over the person in Mr. Crowley’s arms.

“I bet he’s going to do the wings,” Caroline whispered to Oliver, and she was right, Mr. Fell's wings made their appearance a moment later, shining brightly amid the smoke that was drifting through the street. After another minute, the person stirred, and then Mr. Crowley carried him to the ambulance.

As they walked back to the bookshop, Mr. Fell began to fuss over his husband, which of course, didn’t please Mr. Crowley very much. He produced a new pair of sunglasses from somewhere to hide his yellow eyes, and his clothes mended themselves as well. His shirt was quite burned, but Oliver could see that Mr. Crowley’s skin was unmarked beneath it.

Oliver ran ahead and came out with a glass of water for Mr. Crowley, and Mr. Fell made his husband sit down in a chair and rest. Over the next few hours, Caroline handled a couple of sales at the front counter—mass market paperbacks only, she was trusted not to sell anything important—and Oliver poked around in the stacks, keeping an eye on Mr. Crowley’s glass of water, just in case. Eventually he went into the kitchen and made tea, which Mr. Fell seemed to very much appreciate, and even Mr. Crowley ate a biscuit, at his husband’s urging.

Just before closing, a last person ducked through the door, a woman wearing hospital scrubs. Oliver recognized her, but couldn’t remember her name until Caroline said, “Oh, hi, Rebekah!”

Rebekah gave them a wave. “I heard about the fire,” she said to Mr. Fell. “I knew your shop was just a few doors down, and...well, they were talking about miracles. I just wanted to say thank you, because I wasn’t sure anyone else would know to say it.”

Mr. Fell laughed. “I’m afraid that all I did was a little tidying.” His voice dropped low as he cast a glance at Mr. Crowley. “I’m not allowed to be near fire anymore. There was an _incident._ So the lion’s share fell to Crowley. I told you he was better than an angel.”

Mr. Crowley made an irritated sort of noise, but rather than respond to that, he just nodded in the children’s direction. “Don’t know what we’d have done without Caroline and Oliver,” he said. “We’ve known a lot of kids in our time. Those two are...special.”

**Author's Note:**

> All right, folks, we're almost there. The last fic in this series (#12) is next! We're breaking from tradition here, as it will be longer than ficlet length to give me some room for a bit more plot than usual: the bookshop regulars know that Mr. Fell is an angel. When Mr. Crowley gets mysteriously injured while Mr. Fell is away and unreachable, the regulars rally to save the day. But in doing so, they realize that everybody’s got their own theory about what kind of creature Mr. Crowley is, and thus, how to help him. Vampire? Snake god? Dragon? It's an interesting discussion, to say the least.  
> Caroline will be our narrator, as she is in Ficlet #1. And a heads-up, actually, that you will definitely want to re-read Ficlet #1 (Are you an angel, too?) really quickly before you read the last one because we're bringing the story full-circle here.
> 
> Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who has loved this series along with me. It's been so wonderful to spend time at the Bookshop with you! <3
> 
> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos are so appreciated! And please feel free to check out my other works.  
> Find me on tumblr [HolyCatsAndRabbits](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/holycatsandrabbits)  
> Twitter [@DannyeChase](https://twitter.com/DannyeChase)  
> Facebook [Dannye Chase](https://facebook.com/DannyeChase)  
> and Instagram [dannye_chase](https://www.instagram.com/dannye_chase/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] There's a fire down the street!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23815051) by [kholly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kholly/pseuds/kholly)




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